Landlord Has No Room For Gripes

Outspoken Tenant Gets Eviction Note

NEWPORT NEWS — A Denbigh apartment owner is trying to turn out a tenant and former Woodsong resident because, he says, she has complained too much since arriving in August.

John Langston, the owner of Colony Square Apartments, readily admits that he wants to terminate his lease with Annistine Patrick because of the volume of protest she sends his way.

But Langston denies his tenant's claim that he does not have the right to go through with an eviction because of her criticism. ``It keeps going on and on, and what else can I do?'' he asks.

Patrick, 49, was an outspoken watchdog during the three years she lived at one of the city's worst blights: drug-infested, crumbling, subsidized Woodsong Apartments. That her battles didn't end when she left Marshall Avenue is a sign, to her, that tenant empowerment is difficult everywhere.

``She's in the private sector now,'' Langston says unapologetically.

Patrick says she has complained to management for weeks about conditions in her modest, one-bedroom home at Colony Square, a small community across Colony Road from Aqueduct Apartments.

Several of her problems have been fixed, Patrick says, but two weeks ago, Langston sent her a letter demanding she leave.

Patrick doesn't like Colony Square any more than its owner likes her, and she says she'll probably move out of her own accord. But she plans to fight Langston's attempt to kick her out - and she may do it in court. ``It's the principle,'' she says, over and over.

Langston contends that he may make a tenant leave any time he wants to, so long as he gives 30 days' notice. The paragraph Langston cites in Patrick's lease does state that he may do that - but only once the term of the lease is up. In Patrick's case, that's not until next summer.

Langston also says that Patrick has broken Colony Square's rules by taking her grievances directly to the Newport News Redevelopment and Housing Authority. That is another reason, he says, that he may legally ask her to leave.

Patrick says her problems began the day she moved in: Her back door had no lock, her refrigerator malfunctioned and her carpet was dirty. Her beefs don't compare to the failing heat, leaking pipes and rampant crime at Woodsong, but that's not the point, according to Patrick. The point, she says, is that management ignored her maintenance requests and then threatened her with eviction if she did not keep quiet.

Langston and his property manager, Cindy White, say much of what Patrick contends is untrue. They say Patrick's door did have a lock when she moved in, and they say the carpet was clean. They say Patrick likes to complain and has repeatedly done so directly to the housing authority, without giving Colony Square a chance to straighten things out.

``If she's going around here and there saying things, we can't help her,'' Langston said.

It is true that Colony Square is no Woodsong. Its tiny apartments are mildly musty, but the cherry trees and salvia are worlds away from the bleak concrete of Patrick's former home, which looks more like a prison compound than an apartment complex and which the Department of Housing and Urban Development will soon tear down.

And Patrick is not an easy tenant. She complains often and loudly about what she thinks is wrong with her home, and she has polled Colony Square's other former Woodsong residents to see if they, too, have complaints.

At least one of those neighbors, Shirley Long, says she's had the same kinds of maintenance problems as Patrick. But Long has distanced herself from Patrick, she says, because she's happy with her apartment and she doesn't want to leave.

``There are a lot of problems, but to me, it's not enough to gripe about,'' Long says. ``I can't afford to have everyone on my back.''

Patrick also wants to start a crime-watch group that encompasses not only Colony Square but three other communities nearby. That rankles Langston and White, who are trying to establish such a group for Colony Square alone.

``The only way we can clean this place up is to keep our distance from these other places,'' Langston says, referring to nearby Aqueduct, Heritage Trace and St. Michael's apartments.

Patrick is a ``Section 8'' tenant, meaning her rent is subsidized by the government. But her dispute with Langston probably will not involve the city's housing authority, which administers the federal Section 8 program, says the authority's director, Bill Hawkins.

If Patrick fights Langston's attempt to remove her, she must do so in General District Court, Hawkins said.